We are constantly bombarded with the message, “Don’t be content. Your life is not what it should be. You need our product, experience or idea to complete your existence here on earth.”  This can drive a person to spend now rather than save for the future, to go into debt, to spend past their means, to give into temptation now, to indulge now, to achieve now – all at the expense of discipline, development and maturity.

The apostle Paul says, “I have learned to be content in whatever circumstances I am” (Phil 4:11). What a great idea! Contentment. And he wrote that from prison! Certainly I ought to be able wait on purchasing that “xyz” that my neighbors or friends just bought and not go into debt. Or get by without and put the funds to better use. Or not be so ambitious as to keep up with someone else that I get promoted to the highest level of incompetence (that’s called the “Peter principle” from the management book published by Dr. Lawrence J. Peter, 1980). Or take short cuts to achieve some all important goal, at the expense of moral integrity.

This complete and settled contentment of which the apostle speaks comes only through the supernatural, that’s why he follows with, “I can do all things through Him who strengthens me” (Phil 4:13). Literally, and in context, the key to delayed gratification is to hold on by faith to the “Strengthening One.” And that will lead to contentment—in any and all situations! That’s the kind of strengthening God can work in our lives. In the end, our delayed gratification will find ultimate fulfillment, “And my God will supply all your needs according to His riches in glory in Christ Jesus” (Phil 4:19). So, my brother or sister, resist the urge for gratification now, and wait for something better latter.  That, as someone has said, is what maturity is all about.